V. I. Lenin

The HeroesOf The Berne International

Deliver:25 May, 1919First Published:June 1919; Published according to the manuscriptSource:Lenin’sCollected Works, 4th English
 Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Volume 29, pages 392-401Translated:George HannaTranscription/HTML Markup:David Walters & Robert CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002.
 Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License

In my article,The Third International and Its Place in History(The Communist InternationalNo. 1, May 1, 1919, p. 38 of the Russian edition), I pointed to one of the outstanding symptoms of the ideological bankruptcy of members of the old, putrid, Berne International. This bankruptcy of the theoreticians of the reactionary socialism which did not understand the dictatorship of the proletariat found expression in the proposal made by the German “independent” Social-Democrats to join, unite, combine the bourgeois parliament with a form of Soviet power.

Kautsky, Hilferding, Otto Bauer and Co., the most outstanding
    theoreticians of the old International, did not realise that they
    were proposing to combine the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with
    the dictatorship of the proletariat! The men who made names for
    themselves and won the sympathies of the workers by their advocacy
    of the class struggle and by the proofs they advanced of its
    necessity, failed to realise—at the crucial moment of the
    struggle for socialism—that they were betraying the whole
    doctrine of the class struggle, were renouncing it completely and
    actually deserting to the camp of the bourgeoisie by their attempt
    to combine the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the
    dictatorship of the proletariat. This sounds incredible, but it is
    a fact.

By way of a rare exception, we have managed to receive in
    Moscow a fairly large number of foreign newspapers, although not
    of consecutive dates, so that we are now able to retrace in
    greater detail—although not in complete detail, of
    course—the history of the vacillation of those gentlemen,
    the “Independents”, on the most important theoretical
    and practical question of the present day. This is the question of
    the relation between dictatorship (ofthe proletariat) and
    democracy (bourgeois),or between Soviet power and bourgeois
    parliamentarisin.

In his pamphletDie Diktatur des Proletariats(Wien,
    1918) Herr Kautsky wrote that “the Soviet form of
    organisation is one of the most important phenomena of our
    time. It promises to acquire decisive importance in the great
    decisive battles between capital and labour towards which we are
    marching” (p. 33 of Kautsky’s pamphlet). And he added
    that the Bolsheviks made a mistake in converting the Soviets from
    “a combatorganisation ofoneclass”into “astate organisation”and thereby
    “destroying democracy” (ibid.).

In my pamphletThe
    Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky(Petrograd and Moscow, 1918) I examined this argument of
    Kautsky’s in detail and showed him to be completely
    oblivious of the fundamental tenets of Marxism on the state; for
    the state (every state, including the most democratic republic) is
    nothing more nor less than a machine in the hands of one class for
    the suppression of another. To describe the Soviets as the combat
    organisation of aclass, and deny them the right to convert
    themselves into a “state organisation”, is
    actuallytantamount to renouncing the ABC of socialism,
    proclaiming, or advocating, that the bourgeois machine for the
    suppression of the proletariat (that is, the bourgeois-democratic
    republic, the bourgeois state) should remain inviolate; it is
    actual desertion to the camp of the bourgeoisie.

The absurdity of Kautsky’s position is so glaring, the
    pressure exerted by the masses of the workers who are demanding
    Soviet power is so strong, that Kautsky and his followers have
    been obliged to make an ignominious retreat; they have got
    themselves into a muddle, for they lack the courage honestly to
    admit their mistake.

On February 9, 1919,Freiheit(Freedom), the organ of
    the “Independent” (of Marxism, but absolutely
    dependent on petty-bourgeois democracy) Social-Democrats of
    Germany, contained an article by Herr Hilferding. In this article
    the author isalreadydemanding that the Workers’
    Councils should be converted into a state organisation, but that
    they should existside by side withthe bourgeois
    parliament, the National Assembly, and together with it. On
    February 11, 1919, in an appeal to the German proletariat, this
    slogan was accepted by theentireIndependent Party (and
    consequently, also by Flerr Kautsky, who thereby contradicted the
    statements he had made in the autumn of 1918L

This attempt to combine the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
    with the dictatorship of the proletariat is a complete
    renunciation of Marxism and of socialism in general; forgotten are
    the experiences of the Russian Mensheviks and
    Socialist-Revolutionaries who from May 6, 1917 to October 25, 1917
    (old style) made the “experiment” of combining the
    Soviets as a “state organisation” with thebourgeoisstate and failed ignominiously.

At the Party Congress of the Independents (held at the
    beginning of March 1919) the entire Party accepted this supremely
    sagacious proposal to combine Workers’ Councils with
    bourgeois parliamentarism. ButFreiheit No.178, of April
    13, 1919 (Supplement) reported that the “Independent”
    group at the Second Congress of Workers’ Councils had
    proposed the following resolution:

“The Second Congress of Workers’ Councils takes its
      stand on the Workers’ Council system. Accordingly, the
      political and economic structure of Germany shall be based on
      the Councils (fibteorganisation). The Councils are the elected
      representative bodies of the working population in all spheres
      of political and economic life.”

In addition to this, the same group submitted to the Congress a
      draft of “directives”(Richtlinien)in
      which we read the following:

“All political power is concentrated in the
    hands of the Congress of Workers’ Councils ....”
    “The right to elect and be elected to the Councils shall be
    enjoyed by all, irrespective of sex, who perform socially
    necessary and useful labour and do not exploit the labour of
    others ....”

..We see, therefore, that the “independent” leaders
      have turned out to be paltry philistines who are entirely
      dependent upon the philistine prejudices of the most backward
      section of the proletariat. In the autumn of 1918, these
      leaders, through their mouthpiece Kautsky, completely rejected
      the idea of the Workers’ Councils being converted into
      state organisations. In March 1919, following in the wake of the
      masses of the workers, they surrender this position. In April
      1919, they throw the decision of their Congress overboard and go
      over entirely to the position of the Communists: “All
      Power to the Workers’ Councils.”

Leaders of this type are not worth very much. There is no need
    to have leaders to serve as an index of the temper of the most
    backward section of the proletariat which marches in the rear and
    not ahead of the vanguard. And considering the spineless way in
    which they change their slogans, such leaders are worthless. They
    cannot he trusted. Theywill alwaysbe mere ballast, a
    minus quantity in the working-class movement.

The most “Left” of these leaders, a certain Herr Däumig,

      argued as follows at the Party Congress (cf.Freiheit ofMarch 9):

“Däumig stated that nothing stands
    between him and the demand of the Communists for ’All Power
    to the Workers’ Councils’. But he must protest against
    the putschism practised by the Communist Party and against the
    Byzantinism they display towards the masses instead of educating
    them. Putschist, isolated action cannot lead to progress
    ....”

By putschisin the Germans mean what the old revolutionaries in
    Russia, some fifty years ago, called “flashes”,
    “pyrotechnics”, i.e., small conspiracies, attempts at
    assassination, revolts, etc.

By accusing the Communists of being “putschists”,
    Herr Dhumig merely betrays his own “Byzantinism”, his
    own servility to the philistine prejudices of the petty
    bourgeoisie. The “Leftism” of a gentleman of this
    type, who repeats a “fashionable” slogan because he
    fears the masses butdoes not understand the mass
    revolutionary movementis not worth a brass farthing.

A powerful wave of spontaneous strikes is sweeping across
    Germany. The proletarian struggle is evidently grow—big in
    intensity to a degree unprecedented even in Russia in 1905, when
    the strike movement rose to heights that had never been reached
    before anywhere in the world. Anybody who speaks of
    “pyrotechnics” in face of such a movement proves that
    he is a hopeless vulgariser and a slave to philistine
    prejudices.

Those philistine gentlemen headed by Däumig are
    probably dreaming of a revolution (that is, if any idea of
    revolution ever enters their heads) in which the masses will all
    riseat once, fully organised.

Such revolutions never happen, nor can they happen. Capitalism
      would not be capitalism if it did not keep millions of working
      people, the vast majority of them, in a state of oppression,
      wretchedness, want and ignorance. Capitalism cannot collapse
      except fis a result of a revolution which, in the course of
      struggle, rouses masses who had not hitherto been affected by
      the movement. Spontaneous outbreaks become inevitable as the
      revolution matures. There has never been a revolution in which
      this has not, been the case, nor can there be such a
      revolution,

Herr Däumig lies when he says that the Communists pander to
    spontaneity; it is the same sort of lie that we heard so often
    from the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. The Communists
    donotpander to spontaneity, they arenotin
    favour of isolated outbreaks. The Communists urge the masses to
    take organised, integrated, united, opportune and mature
    action. The philistine slander of Dumig, Kautsky and Co. cannot
    refute this fact.

But the philistines cannot understand that the Communists quite
    rightly regard it as their dutyto be with the fighting masses
    ofthe oppressed and not with the philistine heroes who stand
    aloof from the struggle, timidly waiting to see how things turn
    out. Mistakes are inevitable when the masses are fighting, but the
    Communistsremain with the masses,see these mistakes,
    explain them to the masses, try to get them rectified, and strive
    perseveringly for the victory of class-consciousness over
    spontaneity. It is better to be with the fighting masses, who, in
    the course of the struggle, gradually learn to rectify their
    mistakes, than with the paltry intellectuals, philistines, and
    Kautskyites, who hold aloof until “complete victory”
    is achieved—this is the truth that the Däumigs cannot
    understand.

The worse for them. They have already gone down in the history
    of the world proletarian revolution as cowardly philistines,
    reactionary sniveliers, yesterday the servants of. the
    Scheidemanris and today the advocates of “social
    peace”, and it does not matter whether that advocacy is
    concealed by the combination of the Constituent Assembly with the
    Workers’ Councils or by profound condemnation of
    “putschism”.

Herr Kautsky has broken the record for substituting reactionary
    philistine snivelling for Marxism. He does nothing else but bewail
    what is taking place, complain, weep, express horror, and urge
    conciliation! All his life this Knight of the Rueful Countenancehas been writingabout the class struggle and about
    socialism; but when the class stiuggle reached maximum intensity,
    reached the threshold of socialism, our pundit lost his nerve,
    burst into tears, and turned out to be a common or garden
    philistine. In issue No. 98 of the organ of the Vienna traitors to
    socialism, of the Austerlitzes, Renners and Bauers (Arbeiterzeitung[Workers’ Gazette], April 9, 1919,
    Vienna, morning edition), Kautsky for the hundredth, if not the
    thousandth time, sums up all his lamentations in the following
    words:

Economic thinking and economic
    understanding,” he wails, “has been knocked out of the
    heads of all classes ....” “The long war has
    accustomed large sections of the proletariat to treat economic
    conditions with absolute contempt and to place all their
    confidence in the almighty power of violence ....”

These are the two “favourite points” of this
    “extremely learned” man! The “cult of
    violence” and the break-down of industry—this is what
    has driven him to the usual, age-old, typical whining and
    snivelling of the philistine instead of analysing therealconditions of the class struggle. “We
    expected”, he writes, “that the revolution would come
    as the product of the proletarian class struggle ...”,
    “but the revolution came as a consequence of the collapse of
    the prevailing system in Russia and Germany in the
    war..,.”

In other words, this pundit “expected” a peaceful
    revolution! This is superb!

But Herr Kautsky has lost his nerve to such a degree that he
    has forgotten what he himself wrote when he was a Marxist, namely,
    that in all probability a war would provide the occasion for
    revolution. Today, instead of calmly and fearlessly investigating
    what changes mustinevitablytake place in the form of
    the revolution as a consequence Of the war, our
    “theoretician” bewails the collapse of his
    “expectations”!

“... Large sections of the
      proletariat ignore economic conditions!”

What utter piffle! How familiar the Menshevik press of Kerensky
    days made this philistine refrain to us!

The economist Kautsky has forgotten that when a country has
    been ruined by war and brought to the brink of disaster, the main,
    the fundamental, the root “economic condition” is tosave the workers.If the working class is saved from
    death from starvation, saved from perishing, it will be possible
    to restore disrupted production. But in order to save the working
    class it is necessary to have the dictatorship of the proletariat,
    which is the only means of preventing the burdens and consequences
    of the war from being thrust upon the shoulders of the
    workers.

The economist Kautsky has “forgotten” that the
    question of how the burdens of defeat are to be distributed is
    determined by theclass struggle,and that amidst the
    conditions prevailing in an absolutely exhausted, ruined, starving
    and dying country, the class struggle mustinevitablyassume a different form. It is no longer a class struggle for a
    share of the results of production, it is not a struggle to take
    charge of production (for production is at a standstill, there is
    no coal, the railways have been wrecked, the war has knocked
    people out of their groove, the machines are worn out, and so on
    and so forth) but a struggleto save the workers from
    starvation.Only simpletons, even if very
    “learned” ones, can “condemn”, under such
    circumstances, “consumers’, soldiers” communism
    and superciliously remind the workers of the importance of
    production.

The first and foremost task is to save the workers. The
    bourgeoisie want to retain their privileges, to thrust all the
    consequences of the war upon the workers, and this means starving
    the workers to death.

The working class wants to save itself from starvation, and for
    this it is necessary to smash the bourgeoisie,firstto
    ensure consumption, even the most meagre, otherwise it will be
    impossible todrag outeven an existence of
    semi-starvation, it will beimpossible to hold outuntil
    industry can be restarted.

“Think of production!” says the well-fed
    bourgeoisie to the starving and exhausted workers. And Kautsky,
    repeating the capitalists’ refrain in the guise of
    “economic science”, becomes completely a lackey of the
    bourgeoisie.

But the workers say that the bourgeoisie, too, should be put on
    a semi-starvation ration, so that the working people might
    recuperate somewhat, so that the working people may besaved
    from death. “Consumers’ communism” is a
    means of saving the workers. The workers must be saved, no matter
    at what sacrifice! Half a pound each for the capitalists, a pound
    each for the workers—this is the way out of this period of
    starvation and ruin. Consumption by the starving workers is the
    basis of, and the condition for, the restoration of industry.

Clara Zetkin was quite right when she told Kautsky that he was
    “slipping into bourgeois political economy. Production
    is for man, and not man for production....”

Independent Herr Kautsky revealed the same dependence upon
      petty-bourgeois prejudices when he bewailed the “cult of
      violence”. When, as far back as 1914, the Bolsheviks
      argued that the imperialist war would become civil war, Herr
      Kautsky said nothing, but he remained in the same party with
      David and Co. who denounced this forecast (and slogan) as
      “madness”. Kautsky failed entirely to understand
      that the imperialist war would inevitably be transformed into
      civil war; and now he is blaming both combatants in the civil
      war for his own lack of understanding! Is this not a perfect
      example of reactionary philistine stupidity?

But while in 1914, failure to understand that the imperialist
    war must inevitably be transformed into civil war was only
    philistine stupidity, today, in 1919, it is something worse. It is
    treachery to the working class; for the civil war in Russia,
    Finland, Latvia, Germany and Hungary, is afact.Kautsky
    admitted hundreds and hundreds of times in his former writings
    that there are periods in history when the class struggle is
    inevitably transformed into the civil war. There is one now, but
    Kautsky is found in the camp of the vacillating, cowardly, petty
    bourgeoisie.

“. . . .The spirit that inspires
    Spartacus is virtually the spirit ofLudendorff . Spartacus is not only encompassing the
    doom of its own cause, but is also causing anintensification
    ofthe policy of violenceon the part of the Majority
    Socialists, Noske is the antipode of Spartacus. . . .

These words of Kautsky’s (quoted from his article in the
    ViennaArbeiterzeitung)are so infinitely stupid, base
    and despicable that it is sufficient to point to them without
    making any comment.The party which tolerates such leaders must be
    rotten to the core. In the light of these words of
    Kautsky’s, the Borne International, to which Herr Kautsky
    belongs, must be appraised on its merits as a yellow
    International.

As a curiosity we shall also quote the argument advanced by Herr
      Haase, in an article entitled “The International at
      Amsterdam”(Freiheit, May 4, 1919).Herr Haase
      boasts of having proposed a resolution on the colonial question
      which states that “it is the function of an alliance of
      nations organised on the lines proposed by the Internationalbefore the advent of socialism... [please note this!
      ][Interpolations in square brackets in
      quoted passages have been introduced by Lenin unless otherwise
      stated.—Editor.];... to administer the
      colonies primarilyinthe interests of the natives, and
      then in the interests of all the nations that are unitedinthe alliance of nations ....”

A gem, is it not? According to the resolution proposed by this
    pundit,beforethe advent of socialism,the
    colonieswillbe administerednot by the
    bourgeoisie, but by some sort of benevolent, just, sentimental
    “alliance of nations”! Is this not tantamount to
    whitewashing the most disgusting capitalist hypocrisy? And these
    are the “Lefts” in the Berne International ....

So that the reader may make a more striking comparison between
      the stupidity, baseness and despicableness of the writings of
      Haase, Kautsky and Co. and the real situation in Germany, I
      shall cite one other brief passage.

The well-known capitalist, Waither Rathenau, recently wrote a
    book entitled,Der neue Stoat (TheNew State). It is
    dated March 24, 1919. Its value as a theoretical work is nil. But
    as an observer, Waither Rathenau is compelled to admit the
    following.

“We are a nation of poets and thinkers, but
    in our auxiliary occupations [imIVebenberuf]we are
    philistines ......

“Only the extreme monarchists and the
    Spartacists now have ideals ....”

...“The unvarnished truth is that we are
    heading for dictatorship, proletarian or pretorian.	(pp. 29, 52,
    65).

Evidently this bourgeois considers himself as
    “independent” of the bourgeoisie as Kautsky and Haase
    imagine they are of the petty bourgeoisie and of
    philistinisin.

But Walther Rathenau towers head and shoulders above Karl
    Kautsky, for the latter snivels, and like a coward hides from the
    “unvarnished truth”, whereas the former frankly admits
    it.

May 28, 1919